Banner of London Jewish Bakers Union (c.1926)From the collection of the Jewish Museum London

This beautiful banner represents a tangible link with the Jewish labour movement which flourished in London's East End at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries. Founded in 1905, the London Jewish Bakers Union was Britain's longest lived Jewish trade union and continued to operate until 1970.

This is one of only two banners from a Jewish trade union in Britain known to have survived. It is of blue silk with red borders and painted on both sides. One side shows two bakers clasping hands before a brick oven, and the reverse side is in Yiddish with an enlarged depiction of the Union label.

The banner was commissioned while Michael Prooth, a leading militant, was the Union's secretary. In 1926 he was deported to Russia for having cut off the power in Kossof's bakery to prevent work being done during the General Strike.

The banner is hanging in the Jewish Museum, Finchley.